Collectables And Sheet Music
by Nova Fearnewood
Summary: It is said that you don't appreciate what you have until it's gone, Maria Hill knows exactly what that's like. When Maria Hill lost Phil, her world became a dark place. Maria would do anything to bring Phil back. Now she gets the chance to right the wrong, but will it be the chance she needs? Rated at a strong T but is subject to change to M if necessary. Read and Review!
1. Chapter 1: The Cellist's Song

**A/N: Hey guys, this is my fourth story in the Avengers Fandom and my first story about Phil Coulson and Maria Hill, even though I hinted at them getting together in other stories. I will switch between three POVs. The rating may go up for later chapters, but I'll keep it at a strong T for now. So read, follow, favorite, review, share with your friends, and Enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Marvel, just my imagination. **

* * *

Chapter 1: The Cellist's Song

**Narration POV**

The slow drizzle on the early summer day in New York City seemed to cast a shadow over the entire urban population, but for Maria Hill the weather matched her mood.

She was moving to Portland at her own request and packing up her SHIELD apartment while in a state of grief. It had been two weeks since the battle of New York but she, unlike everyone else, had been mentally referring to the days as the number of days since Phil died and it was tearing her apart.

Phil hadn't just been her friend and coworker, he had been her lover.

About a month before the world got crazy and the Tesseract was stolen, Phil and Maria celebrated their nine month anniversary, a few weeks after that, Maria felt like the relationship was quickly becoming too serious and she was getting worried that her work would pull her away from Phil so she ended it and told him that she would be moving to Portland to work at SHIELD's newer West Coast Departments. Shortly after that, Phil was murdered and her heart was torn apart. She felt even worse knowing that he had died with the pain of losing her in his heart.

She knew that, even though he never said so directly, he loved her with every fiber of his being and would take a bullet to spare her life... She had just thrown it all away because she was scared and now she felt worse than ever.

She packed her boxes, her soul feeling just as gray and gloomy as the skies outside. She reached for a framed picture off of the shelf in her living room and cried when she saw the photo.

It was the one of Phil and herself when they went back to her hometown of Chicago and went to a Bears game together. It had been snowing and they were both dusted with snowflakes at Soldier Field that day. In the photo, they were hugging and their faces were rosy due to the chill. Their breath came up in clouds around them and Maria had kept her ticket stub, placing it in the frame with the photo.

She dried her eyes and put the photo in a box before taking down the rest of the photos quickly, placing them facedown as most of them were of Phil and herself.

She sealed the box up and ran it out to her truck, placing it in the backseat with her duffel bag full of clothes.

She worked quickly throughout the remainder of the dreary day, hoping to sleep all night and leave New York behind her in the morning so she could drive to the coast.

Just so she could escape the claws of guilt and grief that were content with devouring the bits of her broken heart.

She had to escape.

* * *

**Maria POV**

I showered off in cold water, feeling as though I didn't deserve to take a hot shower after what I had done to Phil. The cold would match the state of my heart; cold and broken.

I tried not to think of Phil, somehow I couldn't believe he was truly gone, I could still feel his presence lingering.

_I should've never let him go…I was being stupid for breaking it off with him… I loved him and he loved me, what was so wrong with that? _

_"Maria…"_, I heard Phil's voice in my head, echoing softly and lovingly, the same way it would when we spent the night together and it made me cry as I backed up into the shower wall, sliding down the cool tile until I was sitting and letting the cold water flow down my body, covering my skin in goosebumps.

The hot tears I cried rolled down my cheeks and I heard his voice in my head once again.

_"Maria… please don't cry for me…"_

_"But Phil, you're gone… You're gone and I'm all alone… Phil, I'm scared…"_, I replied in my head, wondering if the grief was driving me insane.

_"I died as a way to save everyone… It gave the team a chance to bond over a common cause… and we won because of my sacrifice…"_

Then I saw him in my head, wearing a pure white suit and radiating with white light. I could almost see his angel wings and halo as if he received the rank of a guardian angel. He was smiling and reaching out to me.

_"Maria…"_

Then I wailed in grief and got up off my ass, turning the shower off as I stumbled out into my bathroom and looked at my reflection in the mirror, not caring that I was soaking wet.

My eyes were red and puffy from crying but the rest of my skin was pale from the icy water.

I stared at myself for a long time and wondered exactly who the demon staring back was…which of the seven deadly sins did I become the embodiment of?

I heard my phone ring and I answered it.

"Hello?"

"Maria, it's Nick."

"Hello Sir."

"Cut the formality crap, I know you're in pain and feeling it more than most of us.", he snapped back in the gruff manner that made me stop crying. "I have a few orders for you."

"Spill."

"You are hereby ordered to remain in New York City until further notice and to create an audio recording of yourself playing the cello."

"Sir- um Nick? I understand the 'stay in New York' part, but why do you need a recording of my music?", I asked.

"Well that's your talent and we were going to use what Phil called the sound of the angels for his memorial service…He thought very highly about your music, so play a happy song and send it to me to use at the service.", Fury replied. "It was one of his last few requests…", he said in less of a gruff voice. "I miss him too Maria, he was my best friend."

"I sniffled a little more and then said,

"I won't do the recording."

"Why not? It was Phil's final request?", Fury asked.

I looked into the mirror.

"He loved hearing me play in person, so I will play in person for the memorial."

"Alright, and Maria?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't beat yourself up over this too much… we're doing all we can to make it okay, but somehow I just know that we never will…"

"Thank you Nick."

"Goodnight Maria.", he ended the call.

I dried off and dressed in the t-shirt I had swiped from Phil ten months ago… the first time we had ever slept together. Now it was nothing but a fading memory. As I slid under the covers I thought of the one song that Phil always loved to hear me play, the first one he ever heard me play when I was just a first year rookie at the SHIELD academy. I was fresh out of a Chicago foster care program and I was eighteen, no longer a ward of the state. Nick Fury approached me a few weeks after my eighteenth birthday when I was working at the local diner and asked me if I wanted a job. One year later, I was shipped off to this facility in the middle-of-nowhere Wyoming.

There, I met Phil who was twenty five at the time.

* * *

**_Flashback_**

_I was deep in concentration while playing my cello._

_ The cello was my late mother's most prized possession and the music was the one thing that offered an escape from the harsh reality of life._

_I struggled over the same bar of music yet again and huffed when I heard voices outside of my door. _

_Things were so loud in the dorms!_

_I grabbed my cello and my sheet music before heading outside to one of the wooden benches overlooking a valley where the sun was setting over the mountains to the west. _

_The sounds of nature surrounded me and I was alone. I weighed my sheet music down with a stone and began to play._

_I messed up yet again and again, soon becoming so frustrated that I almost ripped the music up and tossed the bits into the breeze to blow away. _

_Just as I went to rip the music up I heard a man say, "Don't rip that… I thought your song was very beautiful… could you try again?"_

_I turned to see who was asking and I saw a young man step out of the pine trees._

_He had brown hair and brown eyes and wore a suit. He was taller than me and had a pair of dark sunglasses folded up in the breast pocket of his suit coat. He didn't look muscular or scrawny but just the perfect balance between the two extremes. Come to think of it, he was quite handsome for being a SHIELD member. _

_"Who are you?", I asked._

_He walked towards me and extended a hand._

_"Agent Phillip Coulson, Level 1 Field Agent… but you can call me Phil. Who are you?"_

_I took his hand and felt a jolt of warmth shoot up my arm and rest in my heart. _

_"Agent Maria Hill, Level 1 Trainee… technically Field Agent… my promotion is in a week…", I replied and realized that I was rambling._

_"What was that song you were playing?", Phil asked as he sat down next to me. _

_ "Oh, just the Cello Suite No. 1 Prelude in G Major by J. S. Bach…", I replied, trying to sound nonchalant when my heart was racing at the speed of light. "You play?", I asked._

_"I play the piano but I'm not that great at it… Can you try playing it again?", Phil asked, taking the sheet music from my hand and flattening out the wrinkles in it._

_I weighed the paper down again and picked up my bow._

_Phil nodded to me and I gazed at the paper before playing._

_I surprisingly got through the whole piece without a single problem and when I was done I was blushing furiously because Phil hadn't taken his eyes off of me for one second._

_"I'm sorry, that must've sounded terrible to you…", I began, looking away from him._

_"No, no, no… that was amazing.", he replied. "I wish I could do something like that… I mean, I have a hobby, but it's pretty lame…"_

_"What is it?", I asked, turning to him, my shyness gone._

_He looked at the ground and back at me._

_"Promise me you won't laugh?"_

_"Promise."_

_He kicked a pine cone and watched it bounce down the hill before replying._

_"I collect memorabilia… mostly vintage stuff, comics, games, but I love trading cards…"_

_I looked at him. He didn't strike me as the nerdy type._

_"That's cool.", I replied and I meant it honestly. _

_"Do you want to go out sometime, maybe after your promotion we can do something? You know you will be flown to Washington D.C. for your promotion at the East Coast Academy and I'll probably be going with you as part of the entourage…", he said._

_"I think I'd like that a lot Phil…", I said, getting up as the evening bell rang, signaling to everyone that evening room inspections were about to begin._

_"Well, I have to run.", Phil said, standing with me and checking his watch, "Holy shit, you should be inside by now! Here, I'll help you with your cello."_

**_End Flashback_**

* * *

We didn't make it in on time and we both got demerits for it, but we walked away from those 100 push ups like we owned the academy because we were leaving together for DC in two days. Turns out Phil and I were tasked together.

We became partners until I made the rank of Lieutenant and started following Fury around like a shadow, but we were always playing a constant game of flirty singles.

Phil was tasked to be the handler and SO of Agents Barton and Romanoff the year I truly fell in love with him.

I laid in my bed and looked up at the crack in the ceiling, it was the same crack I had looked up at when I was panting and aftershocks were assaulting my body almost ten months ago. It was right after Phil and I made love for the first time, and I noticed that the crack was in the vague shape of a cat.

I remember pointing it out to Phil and, after he shifted around a bit, he said saw an elephant instead.

I sniffled as I tried in vain to see the elephant for the millionth time… then again , Phil was a different person who saw the world in a different light than I did.

_"Maria?"_, I could've sworn I heard Phil whisper.

I laid in silence, wondering if I was losing my mind or if Phil was actually haunting me…

_"Maria…"_

"Phil?", I whispered into the dark.

No reply.

I was going crazy with grief.

The tears began to fall freely and I actually started praying to a God that probably didn't like the fact that I killed for the good of everyone else.

"Please God, if you're even there, hear me out. I've done some bad things in my life but they've been done for the right reasons… forgive me for them… Please let me know in some way that Phil is at peace… send me a sign…", I cried into the darkness.

_"Maria… I'm not gone yet…"_, Phil's voice echoed in my head._ "I'll be with you…please don't cry…" _

"Stop it! Stop it!", I yelled into my pillow.

I cried myself to sleep again that night and sent Fury came over the next day to check on me and to tell me that if I didn't seek counseling, I would be put under suicide watch.

So I played _Cello Suite No. 1 _ and left the house to go to mandatory grief counseling.

Through all of it, I just had the feeling that Phil wasn't gone yet.

_"Maria… I'm still here…"_

I blinked away tears as I continued to pack.

_"I know Phil, I know."_

* * *

**A/N: Sorry that the first chapter is kind of depressing, but it will get better! Review, Favorite, and Follow! Flames are ignored but constructive criticism is very welcome.**


	2. Chapter 2: Truth

**A/N: Thank you to the guests who reviewed! This story will be unbeta'd so there will be some mistakes here and there, sorry for that.**

***Contains spoilers from Agents Of SHIELD Episode 11 ("The Magical Place")***

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything.**

* * *

Chapter 2: Truth

**Maria POV**

_The mountainside where we met._

_Soldier Field._

_That little restaurant in D.C. where we had dinner the night of my promotion._

All those memories lit up my mind as my bow ran over the strings of my precious cello.

_"I thought your song was beautiful…"_

My fingers flew over the fingerboard and changed the notes coming from cello in rapid succession.

_"I don't see the cat… I see an elephant…"_

I missed Phil so much and if I was destined to never love again, and I would be alright with that.

Phil was my everything and he was the only man I could ever bring myself to love.

_"Agent Coulson is down… they've called it…"_

I looked up as my phone rang and I stopped playing to answer it.

"Hello?"

"It's Nick… How are you Maria?", my superior replied.

"I'm doing better…What's up?"

"We just have to update our records and we need you to come into HQ for that."

"I'll be right over."

"Alright, see you in a few.", he replied before ending the call.

I put my cello away and pulled on my rain gear, glancing at the floor length concert gown hanging in a garment bag in my hall closet as I went about my business.

I had to get it refitted and cleaned before the Phil's memorial service in two weeks, why not get it done while I'm out?

As I was thinking that, I grabbed my store note, garment bag, and purse before closing the front door behind me.

I was humming to myself as I walked down the flight of steps leading outside and I didn't watch where I was going, pausing to wave to the little boy named Byron who lived next door. As the only son of SHIELD secretary Gwendolyn Dukakis, Byron was a bright boy and I had been his baby sitter on many occasions.

I slipped on the rain-slicked porch, tumbled headfirst down the concrete steps and landed on the sidewalk.

Byron raced over to me, even at age seven, he could tell that I was hurt.

"Miss Hill, are you okay? Do you need help?", he asked as a sharp pain flashed through my cranium and then an identical pain shot down my left leg.

I rubbed the back of my head where it hurt and pulled my hand away to find it covered in blood.

"Byron… get your mom… tell her to take my phone and call Mr. Fury, he's on speed dial number two…", I said as I pulled out my iPhone and unlocked it, handing it to the boy, "Tell her to tell Mr. Fury that Miss Hill fell down the steps and that I need him to send a unit over…"

Byron nodded and ran off as I wadded up my raincoat and used it as a pillow.

Byron came racing out with his mother who was on the phone with Nick.

"…Yes sir, she's right here…", she said, "Thank you sir.", and ended the call.

"Lieutenant Hill, what happened? Byron says you fell down and hurt your head…", she said, handing me my phone.

"Yeah, that's what happened…", I said, trying to hide the blood as a SHIELD Medical Transportation unit screeched to a halt nearby.

"Well, thanks Byron, thanks Gwendolyn, this is my ride…", I murmured as Byron and Agent Dukakis nodded.

"Feel better Miss Hill…", Byron said and he waved to me as I was loaded onto a gurney and hauled into the ambulance.

"Lieutenant Hill! What happened?", one medic asked as he pulled my bloodied raincoat away and stuffed a wad of gauze in its place.

"I fell down the stairs and hurt my head and my leg.", I replied as my leg started throbbing.

"We're on our way to HQ so we can check you in and fix you up in no time."

"Good… and if I hear any of you gossiping, I will call Director Fury down here and he'll go over the disciplinary protocols for the entire medical staff, and I will personally fire anyone who violates the SHIELD Patient Privacy clause. Do I make myself clear?"

"Clear as crystal Lieutenant.", the medic replied, making the other medics fall silent around me.

I remember having to deal with Natasha putting one of SHIELD's gynecologists in a chokehold for saying something about Russians not waxing their bikini lines after one of her routine exams. One of my personal medics made a remark about a tattoo I have on my hip and spread it all around SHIELD. I was humiliated and then I got even.

After that, I became one of the multiple agents who were hell-bent on silencing the SHIELD Medic rumor mill.

The next hour or so passed in a haze of pain and triage as the medics gave me a small dose of morphine for the pain (apparently I had broken two bones in my leg and sprained my ankle while concussing myself).

I was so relieved when they were done fixing me up and they left except for one tired looking nurse who had to stay for observation. I was put on an around-the-clock watch in case I showed signs of having a brain hemorrhage due to my concussion.

The nurse sat there with her laptop, typing away with a pen sticking haphazardly out of her jet black bun, and I watched her in my peripheral vision for about an hour before I felt the morphine wearing off.

"Excuse me…", I rasped and the nurse looked up in surprise.

"What can I do for you, Lieutenant Hill?", she asked.

I paused.

I didn't want her to do anything really… I couldn't feel the pain of my injuries anymore, the only ache I could feel was coming from my still broken heart.

"Lieutenant Hill?", she asked, her vivid green eyes widened in concern, "Are you okay?"

"Yes… I'm fine…", I whispered hoarsely. "Can I have some water?", I asked.

"Of course…", the nurse said and left the room, returning shortly with a bottle of water and a drinking straw.

I sipped my water slowly and she nodded.

"Good… slow sips…"

I glanced down at her badge and frowned when I saw it was attached backwards.

"Your badge is flipped…", I muttered as I placed the water on my side table.

She fixed her badge.

_Lilith X. Steele, RN, SA, General Medic & Surgeon's Assistant, Level 7._

"What does the 'X' stand for?", I asked, noting her middle initial.

"Xahlia…", she replied, sitting down at her computer again and yawning.

"How long have you been here?", I asked.

She glanced at her watch.

"I'm coming up on ten hours… then again, I just got done with a rather gruesome yet groundbreaking procedure…", she added, "I'm typing up my report on it now…"

"I'm security clearance level seven and I didn't hear about any new advances or special cases… what happened?", I asked.

"Lieutenant Hill, I'm not allowed to violate patient privacy, those are your orders, not mine…", she said in an even tone.

"You're right… could you at least tell me what the goal of the procedure was?"

She smirked.

"I can tell you everything you want to know if you'll be willing to bend your own rules… I'm not allowed to disclose names, gender, physical traits, personal info, level number, or how the person sustained the injury, or even what the injury was."

"I'm bored to death here… let's hear about how you installed a bionic limb or something…", I shrugged.

"Well they were unconscious when the surgery began and the goal was to give the patient a happy memory of a beautiful beach so that they would forget the number of surgeries they had been through…", she said.

"But how is that possible?", I asked, "You'd have to get inside their head to do that…"

She laughed grimly.

"We did…"

The realization dawned on me.

"Oh God, you mean to tell me you actually operated on their brain?", I asked.

"Yeah… the worst part of it was that we had to ensure that the memory stuck there…"

I mulled that over for a moment.

"Nurse Steele…"

"Call me Lilith… I'm technically on my break anyway…", she shrugged.

"In that case, call me Maria, I'm temporarily out of commission…", I replied and Lilith cracked a smile.

"Alright Maria…you were about to say something?"

"Yeah… why was making sure the memory stuck the worst part?"

"We had to wake the patient to do it…", she muttered, shaking her head.

"What? They were _awake _when you were picking their brain? Do you have any idea how sick that is?", I asked in disgust.

"It was sick, evil, cruel, unorthodox, and terrifying…", she muttered, squeezing her eyes shut, "… I wasn't even picking their brain either… there was this robot that changed the memories through use of electric impulses... it had these delicate looking claws and two pads that held the brain in place. The claws worked furiously on the patient's brain and the operation was done in an hour and a half."

"Did they survive?", I asked, choking back bile at Lilith's description of the hell the patient must have been put through.

"Yeah, but during the operation, all they kept saying was 'Please let me die, please I'm begging you, just let me die'... it was awful.", Lilith said with a shudder. "The last thing they said as we put them under anesthesia for the post-op procedure was 'Tahiti is a magical place', so it must've worked."

"Was the patient a SHIELD agent or was it a prisoner?"

"It was an agent… one of the field agents actually… you probably worked with them…", she said.

I was angry now.

"Who ordered the procedure? The patient? The patient's family?", I asked, keeping my anger from creeping into my tone.

Lilith looked right into my eyes.

"Director Fury himself."

I tried to make sense of it.

The operation, the methods, the outcome, and the identity of the mystery agent.

There are close to two thousand field agents and I didn't know half of them.

I visited the training academies as Fury's second-in-command, so it was possible that I had met the patient or spoke at their promotion banquet.

"Can you tell me anything else?", I asked, now feeling angry at Fury.

"Yeah…", she began, looking off into thin air, "they shouldn't be alive…"

"You wish they were dead?", I asked, now confused.

"When I said that the patient was asking for us to let him die, we should have let it happen."

"Wait… 'him'? It was a man?", I asked and Lilith went wide-eyed.

"Shh! That was an accident! C'mon, don't get me fired, this surgery was supposed to grant me temporary security clearance level eight! Telling a level seven agent, even if she's Fury's right hand woman, can get me shot!", she whispered urgently.

I nodded and apologized, not wanting to have another death weighing on my conscience.

Goodness knows, I already had Phil's death weighing on my conscience and that felt like I was carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders.

"I think I should get some rest…", I said to Lilith as I leaned back in bed and closed my eyes.

As I drifted off to sleep, I couldn't help but feel as though Phil was closer than ever.

* * *

**_Two Weeks Later…_**

I returned for my checkup to see how my concussion was healing and I spotted Lilith in the hallway.

"Nurse Steele!", I called, hobbling over on my crutches.

Lilith met me halfway.

"Lieutenant Hill, how are you doing?", she asked as I sat down on a bench.

"Oh, the crutches are bothersome, but it isn't anything I haven't gone through before… How are you?", I asked.

"Fine, the patient is doing well too… they've been in a coma since the surgery but they are expected to make a full recovery.", she said before the surgeon paged her.

"Well, looks like I have to go attach a bionic limb or something.", she said with a shrug.

I got up off the bench and went to find my new doctor's office.

As I wobbled along on my crutches, I realized that I'd only ever been in the Medical section of the NYC HQ three times and I was still unfamiliar with the layout.

I got in the elevator and looked at the note my doctor had scrawled out.

_"Did the floor number say 17 or 11?"_, I thought, squinting at the messy writing.

I suppose I should just try both then…

I pressed the number for floor 17 and rode up in an empty elevator.

I emerged and the floor was dead silent. No nurses were mulling about but there was one guard seated at a reception desk.

He looked up at me then did a double take and hopped to his feet.

"Lieutenant Hill! Here let me help you!", He said rushing over to me even as I waved him off.

"I'm fine! I'm not crippled!", I chastised.

"My apologies ma'am. Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea? Water?", he rattled off.

"No, I'm fine.", I said sitting down.

"I suppose Fury sent you here…", the guard began.

I quirked an eyebrow.

"Fury didn't send me anywhere… Why would he?"

The guard got this look on his face and looked around the empty ward before tapping on the desk.

I looked at his finger and realized that he was tapping out something in Morse code.

"Wait.", I said and he stopped tapping, looking up at me apprehensively.

"Lieutenant, please listen.", he said before tapping again and talking about the weather to provide cover noise for the audio surveillance.

I was deciphering his code quickly.

_"Secret of this floor, Fury told us not to tell, you deserve to know."_, he tapped in code and stopped talking about the weather.

I started to talk about sports as I tapped back.

_"Why would it concern me?"_

He picked up where I left off and started talking about the Olympics in London.

_"You were Coulson's best friend."_

_"Coulson is dead."_

_"No."_

I looked over at the door behind the reception desk and back at the guard in utter confusion.

"Coulson's memorial service is in two days…", I said in an even voice.

"There won't be a body.", he replied.

"He's been gone for a month. Trust me, I know…", I replied fighting back hot tears.

"He's been here for a month… Agent Coulson did die but Fury played God and did something to him that brought him back to life… you have the right to know…"

I heard the elevator doors open and Fury walked out.

Both of us got to our feet.

"Lieutenant Hill, stay put. Agent Johnson, you and I need to talk in private. Come with me…", he said and the guard walked over to Fury.

"Nick! I don't want you to fire him…he was right, I do have the right to know what happened to Phil and I want to know what you did to him…", I yelled as Fury turned his back on me, stopping in his tracks.

"Maria… I wasn't going to fire him. I was going to give him his new Level 7 badge and tell him exactly what being a Level 7 means… But you do deserve to know the truth…", Fury replied, handing Agent Johnson his badge and relieving him of his guard duties.

"Now will you tell me what you're playing at here?", I asked, sitting down as Fury sat across from me.

"When Phil Coulson was pronounced dead, I swore that I would bring him back somehow. I ordered all the higher ranking medics and surgeons in SHIELD from every medical field of study to use whatever means necessary to bring Coulson back. They teamed up and explored all options and theories in both the orthodox and the unorthodox sides of practice… they found a way and brought him back. It took seven surgeries to correct everything after the multiple operations he had while he was dead and he fell in and out of consciousness. During his brief periods of consciousness, he would tell us to just let him die. After the sixth surgery, he had lost the will to live because of the pain he'd been put through just to get him to come back to life. The last step was to give him the will to live.", Fury said.

"He was the patient you did a memory replacement on…", I whispered, feeling nauseated and betrayed.

"Yes… I don't even care how you found out about that, the point is that you know now.", Fury replied.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I was going to tell you about it but I saw how torn up you were about his death and assumed that you would be strongly opposed to my decision to bring him back because of the pain I would be inflicting upon him. I'm sorry we had to keep you in the dark.", he apologized.

"Is he okay?", I murmured.

"He's in a coma for the time being, we have to wait for his scars to fade and then we can wake him up. He won't remember a thing about the procedure, all he will remember is being in a tropical paradise on a vacation. He will wake up in his hospital bed and then he will be told that the paradise was all a dream that he had while he was in a coma healing from his injuries.", Fury replied.

"We aren't going to tell him that he died?", I asked.

"No, we'll tell him that he was dead for about forty seconds, that we got him to the medics and that they saved him. We'll tell him that they performed a bunch of surgeries to repair his heart and that he fell into a coma."

"Can I see him?", I asked, and the tears I had been fighting back finally spilled over.

"Of course you can, hell, you were the closest person he had, you can see him any time you want, just don't break the rules to see him. Now I have somewhere to be in ten minutes, maybe I should make sure you see your doctor and then you can come back.", he replied.

"Yeah… I do have to see my doctor and get myself cleared.", I said, standing up and hobbling away on my crutches, promising to return as soon as I could.

Fury followed me into the elevator and we rode down to the 11th floor in silence.

As I got off the elevator I turned around, "Fury…", I began.

"Yes Hill?"

"If I die, promise me that you'll let me go."

"I promise.", he replied before the doors closed.

I had found the truth and it was so contradicting.

It made me sick to think that Fury blatantly defied Phil's wishes and yet I was thankful that he did.

I was torn in two over the methods that were used and yet I was wholly relieved to have a second chance to make things right with Phil.

I was within the secret and yet I was without it.

My checkup went quickly and I was cleared for work (I still had to take it easy with my broken leg).

I couldn't wait to get back to the 17th floor.

I wanted to hold Phil's hand again and make sure he was truly alive again.

Perhaps the rekindled spark of life in him would be strong enough to mend my shattered heart and my broken soul.

I walked down the hall and paused before going into his hospital room.

Then I saw him in his comatose state.

The machines around him weren't keeping him alive, only measuring his vitals. The only needle in his arm was his IV line.

The steady beeping of the heart rate monitor proved to me that Phil, _my Phil, _was back.

"Phil… I knew you weren't gone…", I whispered through my tears.

I pulled up a chair and sat next to Phil's bed.

He looked so peaceful, the lines on his forehead were relaxed and a small smile was on his lips.

I reached out to touch his hand and hesitated, almost afraid it would feel different from the last time I held his hand.

I shook my head and touched his hand anyway.

Just as warm as before and still this side of rough, my hand slipped perfectly into his just like it had so many years ago.

I held his hand for the first time on the night of my promotion.

_"It's like we were made for each other."_, Phil said a few months into our relationship when we were holding hands one day.

As if on cue, the heart rate monitor began to beep at a slightly faster rate and Phil's hand twitched around mine as if he knew I was here.

"Phil…", I whispered as I leaned down and pressed my lips to the back of his hand.

I would get the second chance at a relationship with Phil, a second chance that I needed but didn't quite deserve… maybe I could make things right at last.

* * *

**A/N: Phil wakes up in chapter three so be ready for a chapter so emotional and fluffy you could choke on it!**

**Leave me a review and don't forget to follow!**


End file.
